Nutrition: Before, During and After Your Bicycle Ride

By Leah Barrett, MS, LCSW

What you eat plays a significant role in how you feel during your bike rides. It’s not so easy to decipher all the nutrition information that’s out there these days. This article is designed to help you better understand how to harness the power of good nutrition for great experiences on your rides.

Before:
The best foods to fuel your muscles are carbohydrates, either simple sugars (such as the naturally occurring sugars in fruits and juices) or complex carbohydrates (starchy foods, such as pasta, bread, rice, cereal, oatmeal, corn and other grains). These carbohydrates provide not only energy but also important vitamins and minerals. Refined sugars (such as in soft drinks, sports drinks and candy) also fuel muscles––but are nutrient-poor choices and lack vitamins that help your body’s engine run best.

Your muscles store only carbohydrates–not protein or fat–in a form of sugar called glycogen. During hard exercise, your muscles burn this glycogen for energy. When you deplete your glycogen stores, as can happen during repeated days of hard training/riding and a low carbohydrate diet, you feel overwhelmingly exhausted. Eating high carbohydrate foods (cereal, pancakes, bread, fruit, vegetables, pasta, potato) on a daily basis can help you ride longer or harder or both and feel better while doing it.

During:

During the ride, drink on a schedule: 8 to 10 ounces every 20 minutes. Because you need both fluid and about 240 calories of carbohydrates per hour (for fuel), plan to consume sports drinks or water plus high-carb foods (banana, energy bar, gels) during the ride. Stop drinking if the fluids are sloshing in your stomach.

Be sure to choose low-fat carbohydrates. When selecting your diet, carefully choose high carbohydrate foods, not high fat foods. The two often come together, such as butter on potato and cream in ice cream.

Leah Barrett - Leah Barrett: As owner and director of become fit, Leah is able to put into practice her in-depth experience and education surrounding health and wellness. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a BS and MS in Nutritional Sciences. She then returned to graduate school at Colorado State University and completed her Masters in Social Work and went on to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. She has over 20 years of experience in Nutrition with a unique niche in behavior modification/lifestyle change: a true mind-body approach to becoming fit and healthy. You can email Leah at: Leah(at)becomefitfc.com